Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 11 Chapter 3 (section)

== 3.05 The Others ==

As Mikko and the rest stepped aboard, violent sparks greeted them.

“Wah!”

Acting exaggeratedly surprised, Kii-kun leapt back.

While cautious of the surroundings, Kasshi spoke in a low voice.

“Apparently Rui was right and something did happen.”

The corridor connected to the inside the boat was horribly destroyed.

The rusted walls had holes in them, and the lighting on the ceiling were cracked and blinking. Torn electric cables short-circuited, scattering bluish-white sparks.

“These are not marks of explosive devices or guns. It looks as though it was made by a burner, but…”

Kasshi spoke while touching the holes on the walls with his fingers.

Mikko led the two boys, going to the end of the corridor.

“Perhaps the ‘result’ had been released, or the test subjects on the ship birthed a new Mushi… no matter the case, we need to be careful.”

The inside of the boat regained its calm, and there were no people around. Originally there were strict guarding measures through a network of surveillance cameras, so it was weird for no one to show up once Mikko’s group infiltrated.

The three people had their faces lit by the blinking lights and sparks while walking through the corridor.

“I-I saw this in a movie… it’s like wandering into a ghost ship.”

“Since we can hit them, Mushi are better opponents than ghosts. We’re lucky.”

“Cough… on the other side of that door is the original research facility.”

Mikko pointed ahead.

“Or rather, what used to be the door.”

Kasshi pointed out. The corridor dirtied with rust and dust was blocked by a thick metal board. The handle part was gouged out and the door remained as crumpled ruins.

“W-what did they do to break it like this… Kasshi, lend me a hand.”

Even the door that originally required one to undergo a checkup by a guard was now meaningless. The two boys together pushed the metal aside and stepped inside.

“Uh… w-what is this…!”

Kii-kun paled.

Completely unlike its disguise as a scrapped vessel, it was a clean corridor with furnishing and ornamental plants—supposedly. At the very least, it was like that until the day Mikko escaped.

At present both ceiling and floor were indiscriminately gouged by giant claw marks. There were also people wearing white coats and camo suits collapsed on top of a burnt carpet.

As far as they could see, there were more than ten people lying there.

“No one seems to be breathing. They’re unlike the living corpses we found at Castello.”

“Ugh…”

Kasshi frowned and Kii-kun leaned against the wall, pale.

The smell of burning flesh caused Mikko to cough.

“Almost this entire floor is the researchers’ lodging area… looking at this, it seems that this floor completely lost its functionality.”

“And where was the actual research conducted?”

“A few floors down from here. Originally it was a remodeled warehouse, apparently…”

Mikko looked ahead into the corridor. There were huge holes from floor to ceiling.

“We can’t use the elevator that was there. We will have to walk a bit, but let’s use the emergency staircase.”

“You two… you really are calm in this sort of situation…”

Kii-kun said in a groan. Perhaps due to fatigue and nausea, he had dark circles under his eyes.

“I must find out what happened to the test subjects and the ‘result’. —If it’s too hard for you keep up with us, Kii-kun, you should leave the ship.”

“No, I’ll go. I will go.”

She thought he’d say that.

No—she ''knew'' that Kii-kun would say that.

Mikko had seen “that moment”.

Since Kii-kun was there, it was impossible for him to drop out in the middle.

“I see… understood. Let us go, then.”

Mikko coughed and then advanced in the corridor.

Inside the ship wrapped in silence, there were many corpses lying in heaps.

With a sense of tension as sharp as a knife, they kept going along the corridor, took a corner and finally reached the emergency stairs.

“Cough… we should be able to reach the lower research rooms from here.”

“Eh? W-wait a minute!”

Kii-kun looked around him, going around the corridor, flustered.

“Kasshi’s gone!”

“…”

Mikko silently narrowed her eyes.

This was also something she knew.

Although the boy vanished here, they’d meet again later—

“Kasshi! This can’t be, hey! Where are you!”

“—Let’s go, Kii-kun. He should be fine even alone.”

“Well, that’s true, but we’re… w-wait!”

Mikko finally went down the stair and Kii-kun hurried to follow her.

“Rui, Daisuke, and now Kasshi… it’s scary, we’re losing people.”

Ignoring the boy’s mutter, she went down the stairs, her steps clattering.

As Mikko and Kii-kun reached the lowest floor, a lone door stood in their way.

They opened the door and entered.

“What—the hell…”

Kii-kun was at a loss for words.

The fact that it was completely destroyed was the same as the upper floor.

As well as the many people collapsed there.

A single thing was different—

Something other than humans filled their sight.

“—This really looks like paradise.”

Hundreds, thousands of butterflies danced around the room, spreading scales.

Insects with wings, arthropods climbing the floor and the walls… the ship was being dominated by these being that could all be colloquially referred to as bugs.

And it wasn’t just insects.

Even mammals like monkeys and horses could be seen further inside.

Not remaining among their own kind, any and all living being filled this space.

It really did look like a Garden of Eden, where no one had enemies. 

“What… is this… wah! There’s even a panda! Is this a zoo?!”

“It wasn’t only humans who were gathered for experiments. Looks like the cages that held them broke down and they were released… cough.”

While crushing the bugs on the floor, Mikko walked ahead.

All manners of creatures rejoiced while only humans were dead.

However, to human eyes this looked like an ideal world—

It could only be called cynical.

“—It’s about time, then.”

While insects flew around and animals walked unrestrained, Mikko turned to look back.

“For Kii-kun to disappear.”

That annoying boy had vanished at some point. She couldn’t hear him asking for help.

Following Kasshi, Kii-kun also vanished.

Only Mikko remained.

She was not surprised at this.

She knew that this would happen.

“…But even if I know it, this is sad.”

That was fine, though, as she would meet them again.

Even if that was the final chapter of destruction, she had to witness that moment.

What was about to happen now—was an unchangeable fate, after all.

“…”

Mikko turned ahead, walking through the corridor.

After turning around several corners, she stopped in front of a certain door.

She weaved through the door that was already open from inside, and stepped into the room—

“So we meet again.”

Inside the gloomy room, the eyes of the person collapsed against the wall looked at Mikko.

“Father.”

Clad in a white coat, he was a bearded man in his forties. His dangling arms had no strength in them, and the stomach of his coat was dyed in bright red.

“What have you…”

Lowering her mask, she bit her lips hard. She immediately used both hands to support her expired father’s chin and looked at his face.

''Clang!'' A metallic pounding sound resounded inside.

The room was spacious and it had many machines installed along the walls and an operating table in the center.

However, there was something else.

Vaguely visible from further inside the darkness—were large iron bars.

Behind the bars she could see glinting eyes. Raising a wordless war cry, someone tackled the bars and shouted again.

“Your research has failed…”

Mikko did not turn to the bars.

Her father’s figure which was turning into a silent corpse looked horribly pitiful.

He’d lost his beloved, dreamed of the Undying, and it became everything to him.

“You were never looking at the Undying in the first place… after all—”

Shedding tears, Mikko smiled.

Although he was overwhelmed by his sadness, lost his sanity and devoted himself to inhuman research—

For Mikko, he was her one and only father.

“The research about the Undying belonged to me since long ago.”

A voiceless scream echoed from within the bars.

Mikko glanced there.

The figure tackling the bars again and again was scared and curled in the darkness.

At some point—

The guinea pigs started being scared when they saw Mikko’s smile.

If she wouldn’t hide her mouth with the mask, they became too scared to even approach her.

“I was not even ten years old, so I couldn’t possibly understand the research documents just from seeing them—you probably thought this…”

Mikko turned back to her father and spoke softly.

Ever since losing her mother, Mikko’s only toys were the materials thrown away haphazardly by her father.

Her father fell into research, not even looking at Mikko. Therefore, he hadn’t even noticed that she quickly overtook his knowledge and even tired of the materials she used as playthings.

“Letting the Round Table know about the research and calling them was also me… as well as having a certain auctioneer among their numbers to select test subjects…”

Mikko was ordered to take care of the guinea pigs the Round Table brought.

She felt a genuine love and took care of them. They became so close to her that rather than her unrelenting father, they were much closer to being her family.

“You starved the test subjects, dangled bait in front of their eyes to call their desires and wishes, and apparently thought of amplifying their powers of vitality—but the fact that it wasn’t so…”

The guinea pigs all spoke to Mikko about their curses and their own unending despair.

She seriously listened to their stories and encouraged them.

She shook them awake many times as they nearly died—and spoke of hope many times.

''It’s fine, you’ll be saved.

''You’ll definitely get what you want some day.

She whispered this to them again, and again and again.

Even if they themselves stopped wishing for it—

“As well as the fact that they overcame death many times due to the love I gave them…”

Although her father had supposedly lost his sanity long ago, to her it looked like his eyes were dyed in the color of fear.

Right, her father was afraid.

Of none other than his one and only daughter, Mikko.

“If you had never noticed these facts, you could have kept going crazy in your research—but you did notice. You have realized that you were living for a long time inside the happy dream I’ve given you…”

All to make the dream of being Undying continue forevermore.

Her father continued his research, got the Round Table as collaborators, and they were all having a pleasant dance.

Even so, the unexpected result of Mushi had been created.

Even so, her father looked back to his daughter.

“Because you noticed and tried to kill me, I had to run away… without me, you shouldn’t have been able to restrain those test subjects that went past the frame of human beings.”

Thinking about it, her father ending up like this was perhaps the natural result.

Mikko thought of at least ending everything, took the promising test subjects with her and escaped.

However, her father probably couldn’t give up. He turned the Round Table assassins on her.

Although this was Mikko’s research, he tried to get the test subjects back and continue research without Mikko.

And so—it ended up as the expected failure.

“However, father, you can be assured. No matter how weak, stupid, and obsessed with a misguided dream you are, even if you are beyond salvation—“

Mikko narrowed her eyes and raised the corners of her mouth.

“I will still love you.”

She smiled kindly.

Her father’s body shook. Perhaps this was a postmortem spasm, or else he touched one of the exposed cables.

Wearing a smile that could even scare the dead, she turned around.

“You are also… glad at my return.”

Inside the iron bars, the figure with shackles screamed.

Fear and anger and hatred—these eyes that held all emotions glared at Mikko.

That figure was clad in an unfitting cloak.

“You had supposedly been caught mere hours ago, and yet you’re here… does this contradiction mean that fate is regaining its original form?”

Mikko stood up. She put her mask back on her mouth.

“Among the many test subjects, only three had promising prospects… and only one reached a ‘result’… I have thought that this research was failure.”

Three test subjects and one ‘result’.

With things being like this, continuing the research was impossible.

Or so she thought.

“But—”

Mikko’s mumble was drowned by a sudden roar.

A massive tremor shook the ship.

Even this impact that sounded as if something on the ship exploded didn’t shake Mikko’s legs.

“Looks like it started.”

Her father and the cloaked man behind the bars.

She told her farewell to them with her gaze.

“Have a good day, you two. —Since ‘back then’ I have set everything on fire, I was unable to witness that moment… but I will probably be able to see it from outside now.”

Leaving behind mumbles only she understood, Mikko left the gloomy room.

Due to the tremor just now, the animals in the corridor were panicking.

Without her smile crumbling, Mikko calmly went through the corridor, going up the emergency stairs—retiring from the ship.

Outside the ship there was a fierce rain.

She could black clouds filling the sky and lines of lights running through them.

And these lights were gathering—

They became a thick pillar that pierced the ship along with a roar.

“Is that lightning…? No, this is—”

Mikko mumbled, her eyes narrowed.

The light pillar swung down to the surface like a gigantic hammer, engulfed the ship and instantly smashed the upper floors.

“I should call it fate.”

The ship’s upper floors broke down, melted, blew to pieces, and a while after that—

It was as though the lightning striking down from the heavens was played on reverse.

From the bottom layer of the ship, a vortex of light and destruction thrust toward the sky.